Antique wall fountains with herbs and flowers growing

The Power of Plants: In and Around Your Home

At Elsie Wolfe Wondrous Antiques, we’ve always been amazed by the power of plants, and their ability to clean, nurture, and inspire. There’s lots of fun and easy ways to flex plant power in and around your own home.

Starting with one of our favourite topics! lemons!

Let lemon and salt work their magic. Sprinkle coarse kosher salt on a cutting board or butcher block, then using a halved lemon with the cut side down, scrub the salt against the wood. Scrape away any gunk, then rinse. You can also use salt and lemon juice to scrub dirty cookware or stained coffee mugs, Genius!

Keep unwanted guests outside.

Sometimes insects and other bugs can make their way indoors. Keep spiders outside with a homemade repellent of lemon essential oil and plant-based dish liquid (slows evaporation). Also, long beloved for its scent and flavour, peppermint can help deter creatures that don’t enjoy it like we do these include ants and mice. 

Lavender-up your home.

Lavender sachets have long been used to freshen up indoor spaces. Tie up (or sew) dried lavender leaves in a piece of cloth, felt, or even a cut-up pillow case. Place the sachets in your drawers, closets, or even under your pillow. Lavender leaves are also wonderful sprinkled into a warm bath. We have the perfect antique feed troughs for growing lavender and other herbs, we also have larger antique tin bath tubs perfect for bigger plants and wall hung water fountains for the tighter spaces.

Bye-bye flies!

Dip strips of paper into a mixture of simple sugar, honey, and water to make homemade flypaper — then hang it where houseflies concentrate. And to capture those annoying fruit flies that invade your kitchen, muddle some fruit in an empty jar, and then cover with some paper with a small hole in it.